As I mentioned in my last post, Mayor Potter has been out of town for the past two weeks, leaving Commissioner Randy Leonard—the current council president—in charge.

In terms of session-commanding, Leonard and Potter couldn’t be more different. Potter may not get a lot done (hey, welcome to that realization, WW and The O—way to look alive), but the one thing Potter excels at is running a tight ship in council sessions. Sure, sometimes he has to yell “SHUT UP” to former supporters, and threaten to physically throw people out, but he keeps everyone from babbling on endlessly. Go over your three-minute testimony allotment, and he’ll shut your ass down faster than you can say “Matlock.”. He even changed the longstanding “open communications” rules in order to silence the inconveniently kooky.

Leonard, on the other hand, enjoys a good conversation. Where Potter gets impatient and snoozy when people talk, Leonard will keep questions flowing as long as he’s got breath. Last week, an otherwise uneventful session devolved into gabbing session—when I walked in, toward the end of a discussion about historic streetcar preservation, and I could have sworn I caught the smell of cigars, and maybe a quickly stashed game of poker. This week, though, Leonard powered through the entire week’s agenda (3pm on a Thursday afternoon—weird) in an hour.

Potter may blast away with the power of his grumpiness, but Leonard wields the gavel like a carpenter on steroids—much to the ear-shattering chagrin of his dais neighbor, Sam Adams, who seemed shell-shocked after the session.

“I think I’ve got Post-Gavel Stress Syndrome,” Adams said, seconds after Leonard adjourned the session.